by Mervyn Wall
Her voice grated in on his thoughts.
“That fellow Cuthbert will be down on top of us in no time,” she said. “We must prepare to defend ourselves.”
“Who’s Cuthbert?” asked Fursey.
“Didn’t I tell you already?” snapped The Gray Mare. “Cuthbert is the sexton of Kilcock Churchyard: his house is not three hundred yards away; you can see it from the door.”
“Is he not friendly disposed?” queried Fursey anxiously.
The Gray Mare was busy stirring the seething contents of the cauldron, but she turned to glance malevolently at her husband.
“Friendly disposed!” she snarled. “What class of a fool am I wedded to? Didn’t I tell you how he denounced me to the Bishop and tried to have me massacred? Do you imagine he’s going to give up just because he failed the first time. I tell you there’ll be dirty work to-night.”
“Maybe if it were suggested to him to let byegones be byegones,” said Fursey faintly, “brotherly love and all that.”
“Yah!” replied the old woman. “Cuthbert’s a spry lad at weaving the spells. I tell you he’s the crookedest sorcerer in the whole territory. Jealousy, that’s what’s at the bottom of it. He has an unfair advantage,” she muttered half to herself, “with that graveyard under his control, full of unbaptised babes and murderers’ bones, to draw on just as he pleases. Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d like a breath of fresh air,” replied Fursey feebly.
“Go along inside and tidy up the room beyond,” ordered The Gray Mare. “You’re a distraction to me here.”
Fursey obeyed without a word. There wasn’t much tidying to be done, the only furniture being the pallet on which he had slept, and a stool. He began tidying these without much enthusiasm, while all the time the one thought kept grinding around and around in his head. Could it be that the churchmen were wrong, and that she was a witch after all? He had often heard that witches made wax images of people, either to cure or destroy them. The piece cut from his habit in conjunction with the miraculous cure of his lameness, most disagreeably affected his imagination. Moreover, he didn’t like the general trend of her conversation, nor did he like the look of that cauldron over the fire, which spat and foamed every time you went near it. His long experience in the kitchen at Clonmacnoise made him doubt whether the brew was fit for human consumption; it certainly did not look like soup. His apprehension increased a few minutes later, when in the course of his tidying, he discovered a box of toads under his bed. He sat down on the stool to think, but his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of conversation from the outer room. His heart bounded at the thought of perhaps seeing and talking to another normal human being like himself, and he arose and stepped quickly across to the door; but when he entered the other room he stood petrified. The Gray Mare was frantically stirring the cauldron with what appeared to be a human thigh bone, and there was a dim shape, a large black object, very ill-defined, squatting on the hearth. As Fursey came into the room it was in process of vanishing. He stared where it had been, but he could see nothing; so that he speedily doubted if the uncertain light had not deceived his eyes. Then it occurred to him that maybe it was one of the Clonmacnoise demons dogging his footsteps to spy on him. He stood with a beating heart until The Gray Mare caught sight of him.
“Make yourself useful,” she shrilled. “Go out and milk the goat before it gets dark.”
Fursey hastily picked up the wooden pail which she indicated with a sweep of her arm. He hurried through the doorway, relieved to be out of the cottage in the fresh cool air of the evening. He looked to left and right, but could see no sign of a goat. He proceeded cautiously around the side of the house, and found her at the back tied to a length of rope which enabled her to walk around in a wide semi-circle eating the grass or the thorns in the hedge according to her inclination. At the moment she was apparently not interested in either, but stood with her forelegs against the wall of the cabin eating the thatch off the roof. She had a roving eye, and when she saw Fursey coming around the corner on tiptoe with the pail, she paused in her meal to contemplate him. As he approached she took her forelegs from the wall and stood stockstill watching him. She had a pair of protuberant brown eyes and a long dun beard, so long that Fursey wondered whether she ever fell over it. She held a generous bundle of thatch sideways across her mouth, which created the illusion that she had a military moustache. They stood looking at one another in silence. Fursey did not like the look of her at all, but he approached, gently patting the milk-pail with his free hand to indicate what was expected of her.
“There’s a good goat,” he said. “Come and be milked.”
The goat’s moustache suddenly disappeared as she swallowed the thatch with no apparent effort. Fursey squatted on his hunkers and placed the pail in position to commence the operation. The goat immediately took a step sideways, presenting her hindquarters to Fursey. Again and again he placed the pail, but each time she repeated the manœuvre. He was squatting there contemplating her tufted stern despairingly, when all at once the pail fell from his fingers. He had suddenly remembered the grisly stories that were whispered in Clonmacnoise, of witches and covens, and of the Horned God whom the witches worshipped. What if this were the Horned God in person exacting from him the homage of the posterior kiss? He remained in a squatting position grown languid with horror, until the increasing consciousness that he was being watched made him turn his head.
There was a man on the far side of the hedge looking in at him, a tall man with sloping shoulders and a wipe of black hair hanging down over his forehead. He was dressed in rusty black, and there was a knowing grin on his face. He turned away at once and made off with a queer sloping stride in the direction of a distant clump of trees. Fursey rose to his feet and ran around the house into the kitchen.
The Gray Mare had a broomstick up on the table and was anointing it with a white ointment.
“What’s wrong?” she said sharply, as Fursey stumbled into the kitchen.
“A queer-looking man,” began Fursey, “with a fringe of hair along his forehead, and a big black lock falling over it—”
“That’s Cuthbert,” interrupted The Gray Mare. “He must know I’m back. There’s not a moment to lose. Come on and help me.”
She led the way out through the door, and with the handle of the broom on the ground ran around the cottage making a wide circle. Fursey ran behind her, not knowing the moment he might be called upon to assist. When they came around to the door again, the circle completed, she began carefully to trace a pentagram around the house, muttering an incantation as she went. It was borne in powerfully on Fursey that this was witchcraft beyond all question. Any doubts he may have retained were dispelled a few moments later when they returned to the kitchen. He saw her reaching up and taking down a box from the shelf. She took out a handful of newts’ eyes and human knuckle-bones, and cast them into the brew. The cauldron moaned hideously.
“Where are you going?” she asked sharply.
“I’m getting out of this while there’s still time,” answered Fursey. “Goodbye, and thank you very much for your hospitality.”
“You’re too late,” replied the witch. “Listen.”
Fursey’s blood grew chill as he became aware of a low drumming, growing louder and louder as it approached. He heard a yelping and baying coming nearer and nearer, until before his horrified eyes a score of monstrous hounds with flaming eyes and lolling tongues came bounding over the hedge. He watched from the doorway as the ghastly pack began coursing in a circle around and around the house. When he tried to move, his knees gave away; and The Gray Mare had to help him across the room and on to a stool, where he sat filled with dismal foreboding.
“It was a good thing we made that circle and pentagram,” said the witch, “we were just in time.”
Fursey was too depressed to take more than a gloomy interest in her further preparations. Above the howling and clamour of the hell-pack that circled the house, he
was conscious of a scrambling sound on the roof, where the goat had taken refuge. A few moments later he saw her bearded visage looking down at him through the smoke hole.
“It’s too late to make a wax image of him,” muttered the old woman. “I should have thought of that before. I’ll have to trust to the lightning and the enchanted fleas.”
Fursey had just come to the conclusion that it was time for him to address himself to prayer and so provide for his own safety, when he observed a severed hand holding a knife come floating through the wall. As it drifted across the room towards The Gray Mare, Fursey bounded to his feet and shouted a warning. She turned in a flash and seizing the broom, struck at the horrid apparition. She missed, but the sweep of the broom deflected its course. The broom struck Fursey on the side of the head and sent him sprawling. From the floor he watched the hand and the knife floating out through the far wall.
“Are you hurt, love?” asked The Gray Mare as she helped him to his feet. Before he could answer a wild scrambling was heard on the roof. The goat seemed to have lost her head, and the reason became apparent a moment later when a skeleton threw its legs over the smoke hole with the evident intention of descending into the kitchen. Fursey seized a box of moles’ feet which lay to hand, and flung it, striking the skeleton somewhere about the middle. It immediately fell to pieces, and its constituent bones descended with a clatter on to the kitchen floor. It recovered at once, formed itself into a skeleton again, and threw itself into a fighting attitude facing Fursey. The Gray Mare came quickly to the rescue. She drew a hasty circle with her broom on the floor around the skeleton, and uttered a word unknown to Fursey. The skeleton once more fell to pieces, this time for good and all; and by direction of the witch Fursey collected the constituent bones and threw them into the fire.
“Counter-offensive!” shouted The Gray Mare. “Open the door wide!”
Fursey flung open the door and ran back into a corner. The witch struck the cauldron three times with the thigh bone, each time uttering a shrill cry. Immediately a swarm of fleas as big as mice sprang out. In two hops they were across the kitchen and had flung themselves on the coursing hellhounds. At first the giant dogs merely stopped occasionally in their career to scratch themselves, but when the fleas had warmed to their work, the hounds retreated precipitately, many attempting the pitiable impossibility of scratching and running at the same time.
“Further counter-offensive action!” roared the witch. “Stand back!”
Fursey crawled under the table as she beat on the cauldron. She shrieked a jumble of words. There was a blinding flash as a stream of forked lightning streaked across the kitchen and precipitated itself into the sky in the direction of the sexton’s house. The quaking Fursey could see through the doorway a similar bar of lightning arising from the house among the trees. The two streaks of lightning forked around one another for a moment as if manœuvering for position, then they met, wound into a corkscrew, and disappeared in a deafening explosion.
“They’ve negatived one another,” commented the witch bitterly.
In the unearthly silence that followed, nothing was to be heard but a slight stirring overhead as the goat, thinking it was all over, began peacefully to crop her way through the roof.
The Gray Mare threw an angry glance at the ceiling.
“That one will fall in on us yet,” she said. “Drat her!”
“Do you know,” said Fursey, “if you don’t mind, I think it was time I was going.”
“You can’t go,” said the witch savagely. “You’re my husband. You can’t leave me, a bride, on my wedding night.”
“I think all the same,” said Fursey feebly, “I’ll take a little walk. A breath of fresh air would be welcome before I turn in.”
“Are you mad?” screamed the witch. “If you as much as put your nose outside the pentagram, Cuthbert will shrivel you.”
Fursey ignored her and staggered towards the doorway; but the sight of a bloody head dancing up and down in the air a couple of paces beyond the door made him change his mind, and he turned back.
“Maybe if we said a prayer—” he suggested in a weak whisper.
“What’s wrong with you?” barked the witch. “Are you losing your courage?”
“I never had any,” said Fursey as he went down on his knees.
The witch kicked him on to his feet again.
“If you’re not going to help me, at least get out of the way. Along with you into the far room, you half-man, you.”
Fursey crept into the other room and on to the bed, where he lay for a long time with his face turned to the wall. Everything was very still except for the tearing and champing of the goat on the roof. Several times The Gray Mare came into the room searching for the ingredients for new infusions and distillations; one time it was the entrails of a sacrificed cock she was looking for, and she turned Fursey out of the bed to see if they were under the pillow: then she was in enquiring whether he had seen a box of dead men’s fingernails which she particularly prized. It was eerie lying alone in the darkened room. He fancied that he could hear a muttering and a moaning about the house, and his imagination pictured hideous beings of dreadful aspect and fantastic shape hovering overhead, grinning and gnashing at him horribly. He could stand it no longer: even The Gray Mare’s company was preferable to his own, so he crawled off the bed and noiselessly made his way back into the outer room. She was standing at the table muttering The Lord’s Prayer backwards as she extracted the venom from a pair of toads. All around her was the horrid paraphernalia of her art, baneful herbs and cauldrons of hell-broth.
“How are things going?” he enquired with an attempt at friendliness. She looked at him not unkindly.
“So you got lonely in there by yourself,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered shyly. “Do you hear something?”
She paused in her work and listened.
“Yes,” she said, “the rain.”
Fursey listened too. It was pleasant to hear the friendly, familiar rain. He listened until he could distinguish the patter of the individual raindrops softly falling on the roof and around the house.
“I’m preparing to send out a spell,” she said, “that will glue Cuthbert to his chair; but before I send it, I want you to do something for me.”
Fursey’s heart sank.
“What is it?” he quavered.
“I’ll turn you into a hare,” she said, “and you can course around and spy out Cuthbert’s dispositions.”
Fursey made a move as if he contemplated returning to his bed.
“Well,” said the witch shortly, “at least you can creep up to the churchyard and bring me back some clay from a freshly-dug grave. That will help me to twist Cuthbert’s magic backwards.”
Before Fursey could answer he became sensible of a dreadful sound high up in the air above his head. It was an evil sound, as if the sky was humming with the approach of unholy legions. A look of maniacal menace and fury suddenly distorted The Gray Mare’s face. She sprang to her feet.
“The rain!” she screeched. “He sent the shower of rain to wash out the circle and pentagram.”
She ran to the door, but it was too late. The roof was suddenly swept from the house, and as Fursey threw a terrified glance upwards, he saw a cyclopean claw that seemed to fill the whole sky. It paused for a moment, then it struck. The Gray Mare uttered a hoarse wail as the claw seized her, lifted her high above the house, and flung her back, mangled and broken, into a corner of the kitchen.
Fursey cowered in a corner. It was a long time before he ventured out, to pick his way over the debris of the kitchen to where the old woman lay in a crumpled heap. She was all but dead. Her eyes were still open and showed signs of recognising him, but she could move neither hand nor foot. He put his arm around her bony shoulders and raised her. Her breath came out in a whisper, which he bent his head to hear.
“Oh, the pain!” she whispered. “I can’t die. I wish I could die.”
The genero
us tears flooded into Fursey’s eyes.
“Kiss me once,” came the feeble, throaty voice. “You’ve never kissed me. Kiss me once, please.”
Fursey was embarrassed, but he knew his duty in the presence of death. He bent and placed his lips gently upon hers. The Gray Mare, with a superhuman effort, wrapped her skinny arm around his neck, and pressing her mouth to his, blew violently down his throat. A ball of fire seemed to roll through Fursey’s veins, he gasped and shuddered. The Gray Mare fell backwards and lay, an old sack of bones, dead upon the floor. For a few moments Fursey crouched beside her while the fire in his body abated, his apprehension that something further had happened to him mingling disagreeably with his regret for the wretched old woman. At last he arose with a sign and leaning against the table, contemplated the ruin of the kitchen. He had no further fear of the sexton-sorcerer of Kilcock Churchyard: somehow he knew that Cuthbert had been intent on The Gray Mare’s destruction, and not on his; but he knew that he had nowhere to go, that no one wanted him, and that the sooner he too was dead, the better it would be for himself and for everyone else.
From these gloomy reflections he was awakened by something that was happening beside the fireplace. A large dark mass was slowly taking shape. Fursey watched aghast, and then he gave vent to a loud groan. There was no doubt about it: an animal like a large dog was sitting on the hearth. It had paws like a bear and was covered all over with rusty black hair. There was a red foggy light in its eyes; and it was apparently a creature unknown to natural history. It did not show its teeth nor exhibit any sign of irritation; but on the contrary gazed at Fursey with benevolence.
“Hello,” said the apparition. “I’m Albert.”
Fursey averted his eyes, but when he looked back again, it was still there.
“I better explain myself,” continued the shaggy stranger, “I was The Gray Mare’s familiar. Every witch, as you know, has a familiar; and it’s a strange fact that a witch cannot die until she has bequeathed her powers and her familiar to someone else. That’s why the poor old lady was tossing about in such agony until she contrived to breathe her spirit into you. My lord Fursey, you have succeeded to her powers and incidentally to me.”
